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JustBob
Inspiring
March 21, 2010
Question

Adobe Font Name Changes...

  • March 21, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 3230 views

Hello,

I have several Adobe fonts on my system with slightly different names. I tried to see which is newer by looking at Creation and Modification dates without much success (details too lengthy for here).

Can someone please tell me which would be the newer version by the font name? Here is an example:

MinionPro-Regular.otf

MinionProRegular.otf

Which would be the newer font? Does anyone know the major differences between these fonts? Why was the name changed? Any reason to keep the older fonts? Restrictions on the new fonts?

Should I wait for CS5 before making changes to my fonts? I mean, could we expect more changes or updated fonts. (I know, you can't tell me much about that; but, there may be a history that would yield a probability...)

Thank you!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    MiguelSousa
    Community Manager
    MiguelSousaCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    March 29, 2010

    On a Mac, to get the version number of a font, just select the file and do "Get Info" (Command+I) to get a window similar to this

    which will allow you to compare version numbers. In this case, the MinionPro-Regular.otf font file I selected was version # 2.030.

    AFAIK, all the MinionPro-Regular.otf font versions released by Adobe had an hyphen in their name.

    J
    JustBobAuthor
    Inspiring
    March 29, 2010

    Hello Miguel,

    Well, I am glad you asked. Here is a sample set of duplicate fonts:

    MinionPro-Bold.otf

    MinionPro-BoldCn.otf

    MinionPro-BoldCnIt.otf

    MinionPro-BoldIt.otf

    MinionPro-It.otf

    MinionPro-Medium.otf

    MinionPro-MediumIt.otf

    MinionPro-Regular.otf

    MinionPro-Semibold.otf

    MinionPro-SemiboldIt.otf

    MinionProBold.otf

    MinionProBoldCond.otf

    MinionProBoldCondItalic.otf

    MinionProBoldItalic.otf

    MinionProItalic.otf

    MinionProMedItalic.otf

    MinionProMedium.otf

    MinionProRegular.otf

    MinionProSmbd.otf

    MinionProSmbdItalic.otf

    Now, let's Get Into on the two Minion Pro Bold fonts:

    As you can see, the version numbers of both files are the same; but, the Created and Modified dates are different. MinionPro-Bold's Creation date is earlier than MinionProBold's; but, it's Modified date is later. Is the Modified date the date it was installed on this computer? Probably not, because MinionProBold's Created and Modified dates are both the same.

    Adobe really shouldn't do this, IMHO; but, if they are going to change the names of fonts, I think they should make a big effort to make sure everyone knows and tell us why they are doing this and if anything in the file has changes, or just the name. I don't know, maybe they did and I missed it. And, they need to make it easy to identify which is the latest version, IMHO.

    MiguelSousa
    Community Manager
    MiguelSousaCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    March 29, 2010

    Do you know where the files without hyphen in the name came from? Can you tell if they were installed by an Adobe app? Which one?

    I can assure you that the names of the fonts were not modified. The correct and official font file names of Minion Pro version 2.030 (and previous versions) are the ones with hyphens. If you have other files in your system it's because something else happened, and I'm interested to know what exactly.

    A
    Anonymous
    March 26, 2010

    Bob:

    I cannot tell you for sure, by my Adobe fonts that came with CS4 have a hyphen in the font name, so I suspect those with the hyphens are the newer versions.

    If you are on a PC, download and install MIcrosoft's free Font File Properties Extension from

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=25A5E8C5-4A5A-4619-A856-6005B1F83235&displaylang=en&displaylang=en

    Then right-click on the font files, choose Properties, and click on the Features Tab. That will tell you the number of glyphs in the font file. Whichever of your similar font files has the larger number of glyphs is almost certainly the newer, since Adobe normally does not remove glyphs when it revises fonts.

    John Hoffman

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    March 26, 2010

    Note for the record that the Microsoft Font File Extension package only works on 32-bit versions of Windows. Microsoft's font group does have one that works for 64-bit Windows, but they are not making it publicly available (I have no idea what reason they have for not doing so).

             - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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